I’m in my first year of grad school. Everything ahead of me looks daunting. Getting through my first TA assignment and set of courses is daunting enough; I can’t even imagine passing comps or writing a dissertation, and the thought of eventually going on the job market is absolutely terrifying. I grad coffee with one of the “senior” grad students – dissertation stage. Old. Wisened. Someone who holds secret knowledge and magical spells. All that jazz.
I ask him what it’s like to write a dissertation. How do you do it on the day-to-day? What does your life look like at that stage? And he tells me, “I sit down and write at least 500 words every day. It doesn’t matter how good they are, or if they’re just stream of consciousness, I just write. Even Sunday.” I absorb everything he says like a sponge, storing it away for the day when I’ll need it.
Over the years, I hear more and more people say the same thing: Just write. Set a daily word limit, and sit your butt in the chair until you’ve written those words. And whatever you do, don’t sit down and read for the day; that doesn’t count as working on your dissertation.
When I finally get to the dissertation stage, I try that tactic. And it doesn’t work for me. The page is filled with unnavigable strings of thought that are a slog to get through when I try to clean them up. Sometimes, I find myself staring blankly at the screen, devoid of ideas and almost scared to start typing. Instead, I mess with the typeface. Work on the bibliography. Anything but generate something new.
I also start to feel guilty when I read anything for the dissertation. This doesn’t count, I tell myself. You’re just procrastinating. And, over time, I realize that I set the expectation for myself that I am done reading after the prospectus stage. If I’m reading during the dissertation phase, I’m doing something wrong, hindering my own progress.
So, I began to re-think my writing process and work ethic. I think I found something that works for me. To any young grad students reading this, here’s how to write a dissertation.
Are you ready for the secret?
Write a dissertation in a way that works for you. The secret is that there is no secret. There’s no magic formula for getting it done, and the only magic we dissertation-phase students have is tailored to work only on ourselves.
Maybe that’s a disappointing secret. A bit vague, maybe, or just plain obvious. But hear me out.
The worst thing you can do to yourself at this stage is to make yourself feel like a failure every day because you don’t achieve someone else’s goals. It’s not necessarily a matter of “don’t compare yourself to others,” although that’s part of it. Rather, if you adopt someone else’s method of writing, and it’s not working for you, it’s important to realize the problem isn’t you. It’s the method. It’s not designed for you; it’s a poor fit. It worked for Joe over there but it just isn’t for you. And that’s okay. We already work ourselves to death in grad school. Don’t make it worse by being unfair to yourself.
So, before you start working on that dissertation, take some time to experiment with different writing methods. Definitely try the ones that work for your colleagues. If they work for you, too, great. If not, keep searching.
Some people work best by setting a time limit: I work from 8-5 every day, and I work hard during those hours, and when the clock hits 5, I drop it.
Other people like word limits, as my colleague did. I’ve found this is quite a common one. And it makes sense: You can’t cram a dissertation in a night or a week like some freshman midterm essay. Writing something every day pushes you closer to that word count goal, and ensures you’re thinking through issues in your dissertation daily. But others, like me, find this method a little too brute-force.
My advisor is a very structured person. She likes writing for, say, 45 minutes straight, 15 minute break, back at it again. Our dissertation writing group meets at 7am; we work nonstop for 2 hours, then debrief and talk about future goals. This doesn’t really work for me, for a few simple reasons: I’m not a morning person, and I like my dual-monitor setup at home. The method seems fine, but it needs to happen at 10am.
What works for me? I start my week off with a reading day. I think, and this just my opinion, that it’s important to keep reading alongside your writing–as long as it doesn’t replace your writing sessions. It’s important to keep on top of newly published articles, and I also like to return to articles I read before. Sometimes they make more sense after I’ve read other articles, and sometimes I find things I missed before (or margin notes I meant to return to and never did).
The reading day gets me warmed up for what I’m planning on writing that week. I’ve reviewed the relevant literature, or discovered new papers I can use and reference. To me, it’s like stretching before a workout: it just feels better getting started with the hard stuff if you’ve had a nice warm-up. Bonus, I can trick myself into thinking it’s not work if I make a cup of tea and do the reading on the couch.
The rest of the week is writing. I’m careful to map out and plan what I want to hit next by section. For example, this week I want to finish up section IV of chapter I, and then move into chapter II section I. I read what’s related to that, and then I work throughout the week to hit that section goal. I do tend to disregard word-count. If this blog post is any proof, I tend to hit those just fine. I’m more focused on completing pre-defined sections of my outline that I built for my prospectus.
But that’s just what works for me. If I could offer a few generalizable tips as you figure out what works for you, I’d say:
- Pay attention to whether certain methods cause you anxiety, or get you “in the groove,” to know whether or not they work for you. I’m the kind of person who hates distance displays on the treadmill, because I’m always looking down at them throughout my workout, and it makes time crawl by and my anxiety spike. I do the same with wordcounts: if that’s what I’m measuring myself by, I find myself checking the little wordcount display bar at the bottom of my screen frequently, and it doesn’t feel good. That kind of anxiety is a red flag that something isn’t working for you.
- If you have tried a lot of strategies and none seem to work, don’t be ashamed to reach out to a mental health professional. Now, I’m not insinuating that inability to find a proper work ethic is some kind of illness! Not at all. But, there could be something underlying that inability and causing it. A colleague of mine, for instance, discovered they have learning disabilities that have somehow gone undiagnosed all this time! Finally addressing those helped them actually get work done in a less painful manner.
- In a nutshell: Know thyself, and listen to yourself. It may be frustrating, and it may feel like a waste of time, but introspection, especially at this stage, will save you so much time in the future.
Good luck!
C. Maples 
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